With the 2022 centenary of Watford’s move to Vicarage Road approaching, writers from The Watford Treasury magazine look back at players who performed great feats on home soil.
Today, Tom Brodrick writes about Watford’s leading player of the 1930s, who broke the club’s league goalscoring record one afternoon at The Vic, and whose final goals tally remains second-highest in our history even now.
It has been said that ‘a great man is always willing to be little’. It is appropriate, then, that Watford’s second highest all-time goalscorer, and for 35 years the record holder for most appearances, was a modest Salford lad of relatively diminutive stature; one who never put himself forward to take penalties and was nicknamed ‘The Boy’ by his teammates.
Signed from Manchester United in the 1928 close season, Tommy Barnett made his debut at home to Gillingham that September. He opened his scoring record at Brentford the following month, two weeks before his 20th birthday.
Just two years after Watford finished second-bottom and had to re-apply for their place in the Football League, Tommy’s league tally of 12 in his debut season helped the club reach the giddy heights of eighth; his profile was done no harm by a further five FA Cup goals. He soon came to the attention of Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman, who travelled to Exeter in April to scout Barnett on behalf of the First Division club.
Tommy, however, remained overlooked by upper-league sides and instead played a further 10 seasons of Division Three (South) football at Vicarage Road. Whilst he didn’t take the Blues’ league ‘golden boot’ until 1933/34, and only again in 1936/37, the longevity of his Watford career in tandem with his steady goalscoring record allowed him to achieve extraordinary statistics.
It was during a frenetic game at Vicarage Road in September 1934 against Clapton Orient that Tommy Barnett became the club’s then-all-time top league goalscorer, scoring once in a 5-0 rout. He had netted his 81st league goal three weeks earlier, equalling the record set by Charlie White a decade before. Ironically, or perhaps fittingly given his humble persona, Barnett’s new record-setting 82nd against Orient was eclipsed within the game itself by Billy Lane and James Poxton, who each scored twice.
The Watford Observer felt the day’s gate of nearly 8,000 was ‘satisfactory’ considering the ‘oppressive heat and the threat of a thunderstorm’. The game was evidently relatively unenergetic until a late twist: ‘Until the last few minutes there was nothing in the match to fetch one out of the apathy the heat engendered. Then came three hectic goals which left everybody – including the Orient defenders – gasping with astonishment.
‘A more sensational climax could not be imagined.’
After a first-half stalemate, Lane opened the scoring five minutes after the break – a back-heel into the net ‘whilst lying on the ground’ – with Barnett providing the assist. Poxton later converted a penalty awarded for handball. The dramatic goal spell unfolded in the last five minutes, with Watford netting three in three minutes as reported breathlessly by the Observer:
‘In the 41st minute of the second half POXTON scored with a low shot from a neat pass by O’Brien following a raid from the right…
‘In the 42nd minute LANE followed up a pass by Woodward and beat Robertson with a well-placed shot.
‘In the 43rd minute BARNETT added a fifth from O’Brien’s pass, Robertson being helpless from a drive from close range.’
The fact that Tommy Barnett’s 88th-minute goal broke the club’s league goalscoring record seems to have gone unrecognised at the time. It is only with the exhaustive statistical records available to us today (for which we must thank the late Trefor Jones) that we can pinpoint the game within which Tommy achieved the feat.
Tommy’s 12 goals by the season’s end helped Watford reach a then joint-highest-ever league position of sixth in Division Three (South). The next four years saw the club achieve successive league finishes of fifth, then fourth place for three seasons running. Who knows whether Tommy Barnett could have created a sensation by firing Watford to promotion in 1939/40 to play against more illustrious Second Division opposition?
The outbreak of World War Two, with the inevitable resulting abandonment of that season, put paid to any such dreams and, as it transpired, to Barnett’s playing career.
Despite this, his legendary status at Vicarage Road had been cemented by 163 goals in all competitions, 144 of those within his 395 league appearances. Those remained club records until Duncan Welbourne overtook his appearances record in the mid-1970s, and Luther Blissett his goalscoring one in the late 1980s.
After the War, Tommy found himself in the centre of the action during the Speedway boom as masseur for the Wembley Lions team at the old Empire Stadium. After a subsequently brief stint working in Australia, he returned to Watford and regularly attended at Vicarage Road for the remainder of his life. He died aged 77 in the 1986 close-season, reportedly en route to collecting his season ticket.
